Sony Meeting and the Lack of Women

Yes, boys and girls lovely people, it's that time again. Time to reignite the fires of war and stamp out sexism wherever it may rear its ugly head.

Today's target: Sony.

Wait....what?

Yes, it appears that the lack of women at Sony's event was caught by some people yesterday, and they tweeted their outrage.

One Elizabeth DeLoria has vowed to fight sexism with her wallet. Quote: "Literally going to buy a Wii U out of spite for Playstation next payday. I'm going to fight sexism by buying from competitors now." (I can't link this because her tweets are locked down.)

Another, "'a glimpse in to the future of play' where everyone will finally listen to sony when they say that women are icky"

What say you, Giant Bomb? Should we expect an article from Patrick soon, is this a legitimate issue? Or are we crying wolf too often when it comes to sexism?

Edit: Whatever your stance on Kotaku, it seems this issue is indeed getting more recognition.

Edit 2: Screencaps of Ms. DeLoria's tweets, since they are the only ones not able to be gotten to.

...what?

I feel like I've fallen into some affirmative-action fever-dream. IIRC there were also no Africans or African Americans. So Sony is both sexist and racist yeah?

Yeah, not seeing even one women walk onto the stage with a Vita strapped to her was pretty weird, honestly.

(If that doesn't work: http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/the-3ds-comes-to-giant-bomb/2300-3905/)

c'mon now there was a brother on stage during the Bungie part. Pay attention!

I'm excite for the article from patrick though....

Clearly tokenism. Racist!

None of the development heads on the teams presenting their games happened to be women. Had a woman been in one of those positions, I'm sure Sony would have no problem putting them on stage.

The sexism whistle blowing has gotten way out of hand.

404'd! Though I'm willing to chalk that up to wonky site issues, but I know exactly what you're referring to.

Edit: No, it's totally working again.

Perhaps if a woman had presented a game the internet feminists would have said that Sony -used- women to promote their games or something like that. Either way would be wrong; is wrong; to those who only think about this stuff all day.

There was a lady during the Media Molecule video. Also I'm pretty sure the cars from Driveclub were all ladies, at least to that one guy.

Haha, well played sir.

Wouldn't it be as sexist to put a woman up there, over the people who actually run the studios/PS4 development, simply because she is a woman. Surely the end goal of feminism should be that both sexes are treated absolutely equally, and in this situation this would mean the exact same people on stage as they are the people in charge. Yes there is the under-representation problem in studios, but that is a problem much larger then video games.

So they basically cant win... If there had been women it would have been considered a ploy or eye candy or whatever, if theirs none is because there also sexist. Yes things could be better for women in the industry but you lose all credibility when you start grasping for straws.

I'm offended.

I think the point is more that there aren't female development heads, right? As such there's sort of a de facto sexism going on.

Both sides tend to overreact in these arguments. I think we can acknowledge that games and game culture often present a sexist point of view. That doesn't mean 'gamers hate women' or that it's wrong for a guy to enjoy looking at cleavage or that a woman can't succeed as a game developer. But we absolutely should recognize that there's distinct inequality in the industry.

I think one could see this as a criticism of our industry generally rather than just sony.

It’s a problem, but it’s not one that Sony or most other game developers are in a position to solve. The likely reality was that the people brought on stage were the best qualified to do so.

I get why Elizabeth DeLoria might be annoyed, but what would she have Sony do? Game development (and really, engineering in general) is a male-dominated field, especially in Japan. This is a result of our education systems, our latent gender roles, the legacy of male-targeted games, the “video games are for boys” stereotype, the problems women have rising to the top of companies when childbirth could stall their momentum, etc. Many of the underlying causes of the industry’s gender inequality will take decades to meaningfully change (and that presumes the right social and government climate), and will involve real economic and social trade-offs. I know that’s no fun to people whose outrage cycles are about 3 hours long.

It’s easy in a snarky-Twitter-post way to say “hey, no women — sexist!”, but that’s continuing to focus on a tiny symptom of much larger problems. I’m more than a little sick of people who think taking easy cheap shots on Twitter somehow demonstrates they’re a better, more enlightened person, let-alone a feminist. That’s not to say they’re wrong to point it out, just that retweeting the tip of an iceberg (to mix metaphors) isn’t particularly profound or helpful.

Her claiming she’ll be buying a Wii U is ironic, as she’s just supporting another male-dominated Japanese company.

Crazy gals continue to be crazy.

I'm not sure finding a woman to take the stage solely because she's a woman is the right thing to do, either. This stuff should be presented by the dudes who are making it, who, in this case, happen to be... dudes.

Hey it's the cos-play girl that didn't want her twitter profile pic when she had her serious face on in the Dead Island article.

Keep women in the Playstation Home where they belong, doing digital dishes and raising virtual babies.

But yeah no one can win with these dumb arguments, people need to be less sensitive about these issues and just learn to live their life.

Anyone complaining about this needs to go take a long walk and a hard think about their priorities in life.

A walk on a train track

With both headphones in.

@theht said:

Apparently, that doesn't count because it was a recording and she wasn't actually on stage.

well, at least they support putting people with mental issues up there? (driveclub guy wants to fuck cars and suckerpunch guy has a phobia of government)

@grantheaslip: is probably right. I'd have liked to see one up there but there's barely any women run development studios out there, and that's a bigger problem than not having a woman come up during the meeting.

No female studio heads, that's the reason why there were no women on stage. Which brings me to the point, why there is none - because women don't form studios themselves. Yes, they are at a disadvantage and this is precisely why they should form their own companies and make their own games, even if small titles. There's more than enough women interested in gaming, believe me. Did they slept through riot grrrl, the DIY ethic of the 80s? Sure, that was music, but women with something meaningful to say and perform pulled through because they fought for that. Come on. We're living in the era of Steams/GOGs/Desuras, pay-what-you-want bundles, big names extending support for indie games and crowd-sourcing. It's the perfect time to take this shit head on. Talking can only do so much. And frankly, this entire fucking business is, right now, way too hellbent on talking.

@ghostiet: I really really want a riot grrl game right now thanks a lot D:

Guess what there were no black people as well! So is Sony racist as well? Maybe they went with their speakers because they thought they'd do the best job at it. I don't view this as sexist or racist or anything. I just see people trying to complain after what a great job Sony did.

@shadows_kill: again, there was, during the destiny thing.

(he just didn't talk)

I miss Jade Raymond. I honestly didn't know that she was being harassed, but it doesn't surprise me at all. She is beautiful and she knew games so listening to interviews was interesting; and I'm probably sexist for just mentioning that she looks good. Pointing that out is sort of taboo now during the Sexist/Feminist wars. Its really too bad. She's a higher upper now I think at UbiSoft but doesn't appear, ever, even to just show that women are around in gaming.

I think that when she was around and if she still was, in terms of the limelight, she could have made more females approach the profession and most importantly make the majority of gamers (males) -get used to- seeing females talk tech and talk about creating video games without having to turn into sex talk and mentioning kitchens.

I do think it was reflective of a genuine issue in the industry, and I think the people talking about Sony not being able to "win" are creating a strawman. People don't complain about women being exploited or used as eye-candy because a woman shows up at an event, they complain because sometimes the women that are used to present these things are wearing sexualising clothing and have little to nothing to actually do with the game. In the situations before where women have taken to the stage who actually have something to do with these companies and are not just the "token female", it's not been an issue. Of course I'm sure we'll just collectively bury our heads in the sand again and come up with a slew of knee-jerk reasons for why this is a non-issue.

Every day, more and more, I feel like I understand why people become more right-wing as they get older. Phoney twitter outrage about something new every day is completely desensitizing me.

So, I don't know much about comic books, but I think the quote in this link applies pretty well to this situation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_52#Accusations_of_sexism

I don't see this as a systematic attempt by Sony to exclude women. That lady's tweet is hilariously bad by the way.

@gamer_152: What could Sony have done, then, to avoid criticism? Were they even able to, or was this a time where you could see the accident coming a mile away, but could do nothing about it?

People are fucking stupid

I think there's a lack if women in the industry and that's where it starts, it's more likely that a man is going to be in charge of a project and that's what happened last night. It is an issue but that doesn't mean Sony was being sexist becaus they didn't have any women on stage.

@turboman said:

I'm offended by you being offended.

WHY MAKE THIS THREAD? WHY?

>:(

I must be in a new universe because the comments on this thread is fucking crazy.

yeah we should really just leave at this because railing against feminists again is really annoying

This is sad because there are real cases of sexism in the world. She just wants attention and clicks for money, or is so shallow it's hard to fathom. This sexism in video games witch hunt needs to end - it is pathetic to the adults in the room, and cheapens the real issue.

Yeh shut it down, this is new levels of dumb that cant even be appreciated.

lol, this is a garbage topic.

Im pretty sure it is a huge lack of females in the industry itself. Relating this to my university the general boy/girl ratio was 51% in favour of girls, but in my course (computer engineering) 98% were males. I swear I only ever saw 2 or 3 girls in my classes ever. I dont know why females dont join but they were not looked down upon or leered at in lectures. Same within my IT classes in A levels, there were a total of 3 females out of the 60 that took the course.
Also inb4 300 more replies, i hope Patrick writes an article on this as it would be pretty funny.